I assume that if the motherboard has a parallel port it's probably just making a cable with the right pins connected, but how would you do it with a PC without any parallel or serial port, like something that only has USB ?

I don't have MCP40 to try it, but I'm using successfully USB to Parallel converter with some old matrix printers.This is the converter - cheap and chinese - but works.
I succeeded to use it even with an old LPT EPROM programmer.

The only MCP I have have the mecanical part broken so I haven't tested it, but yeah, the connection is basically a normal centronics port, so you can plug it to a PC without any problem.
Apart that you will need a driver...

Godzil wrote:The only MCP I have have the mecanical part broken so I haven't tested it, but yeah, the connection is basically a normal centronics port, so you can plug it to a PC without any problem.
Apart that you will need a driver...

Godzil wrote:The only MCP I have have the mecanical part broken so I haven't tested it, but yeah, the connection is basically a normal centronics port, so you can plug it to a PC without any problem.
Apart that you will need a driver...

Driver?
Is it not just possible to send bytes to the port?

Not directly, I mean with a real Parallel port yeah using the corresponding IO ports, on a USB adapter it's a different story.

By driver I mean some code to send data to the parallel port specifically for the printer.

It's definitely possible of course but a USB adapter is not working the same way as a standard parallel port